This invention relates to the fields of computer and communications. More particularly, the invention relates to the dynamic routing and control of a voice telephone call in real-time.
In a company call center setting, a PBX or other switching equipment is deployed to redirect incoming customer calls to the next available customer service agent to handle the incoming customer call. This in-house PBX or switch equipment is often coupled to dedicated incoming phone lines which serve only that particular company.
In addition to routing an incoming call, an associated “screen-pop” is often presented on an agent's display in parallel with the incoming phone call. This “screen-pop” typically provides the phone agent with information associated with the customer.
Outsourced call centers provide a more generalized solution whereby a telecommunications infrastructure is shared among many customers. Outsourced call centers are typically serviced by many incoming phone line trunks which accept incoming phone calls for any of its customers. Agents may be dedicated to accept phone calls only for certain customers, but often agents are trained to accept incoming phone calls for a list of companies An automated call distribution (ACD) technique for this scenario is typically deployed by the call center's telecommunications equipment to automatically distribute the incoming calls to the appropriate agent.
Known outsourced call centers have several limitations and economic challenges. First, dedicated equipment can handle only a certain peak number of phone calls. Although the average utilization rate of the equipment and phone lines is typically much lower than the peak capacity, the call center must still pay for enough equipment capacity to handle peak demands. The difference between the average utilization rate and the peak demand levels can be very large, thus creating an economically inefficient use of the expensive dedicated equipment infrastructure.
Second, as a call center grows, it continually needs to expand its telecommunications infrastructure and the number of phone lines needed to handle the additional call load. The capital outlay for fixed telecommunications equipment is often expensive, and the optimal growth of the telecommunications infrastructure equipment can be difficult to predict.
Third, if outsourced call centers use external agents physically outside of the company's premises, such as work-at-home phone agents or offshore phone agents, then the PBX or switched telecommunications solution is inherently inefficient: typically two legs (two circuits) of phone lines are required, the first being an incoming circuit used to deliver the incoming call to the PBX, the second being an outgoing circuit placed to connect from the PBX to the external agent. Thus two circuits are activated and required for each such call.
What is needed is a solution that would improve efficiency and utilization rate of port use, provide higher available port capacity, use port capacity more flexibly (to reduce the need to accurately predict port needs), and provide an improved method of call routing for off-premises agents.